“Discover the Rare Pearl in Your Closet: Loan Your Poor Clares of Mazamet Clothes for Museum Display in Tarn Department’s Exhibition”

Be careful, your closet may contain museum pieces! But be careful, it’s a compliment and it’s to be taken at face value. The Department of Tarn indeed launched a call for contributions to find clothes which will soon be on display.

There is of course a condition to these loans: the clothes in question must have been made by the Poor Clares of Mazamet.

From 1^is July to October 8, 2023the Department will indeed propose an exhibition around the embroidery work of the Poor Clares, who remained in Mazamet for more than a century. An event to discover at the Departmental Textile Museum of Labastide-Rouairoux.

And besides, it’s not just clothes that interest the department on this subject. Images are also welcome.

From soldier shirts to children’s dresses

The county council also gives examples of the multiple works of the Poor Clares to unearth the rare pearl in your home: dresses for children, flannel belts, shirts for soldiers (at the start of the war), banners, engravings, images of first communicants, pious images depicting the Virgin and Child in shades of blue, images of Saint Andrew holding the cross, menus, guest books, jubilee collections, liturgical manuals, portraits and paintings…

Let us reassure the owners, these are not donations, but loans, intended exclusively for this summer exhibition.

Renowned know-how

Ten nuns of the order of Poor Clares had settled in 1887 in Mazamet. They first embroidered for the Church. With internationally recognized know-how. They also made the chasuble of a pope, Pius XI. But quickly evolved towards other registers. Copying the great masters or creating in Art Deco mode. Their peak was between 1920 and 1940. Their monastery closed in 2015.

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